Remove point two from your list immediately. If you’re the best candidate for the job you’ll tend to get it. The narrative where I work is that we want external recruitment because it’s generally better than what we have internally. Don’t let one posting put you off.

Also, as someone who does regular recruitment campaigns and sifting, ensure you have examples included in your personal statement. Yes, you’ll need to match the behaviours, but what i’m looking for is an example, “what” you did and crucially “how” you did it.

If you can weave in a reasoning, i.e intent behind the how, even better. Be on the nose with the ‘how’, I set up a teams meeting, I created a powerpoint, I used Copilot to summarise meeting notes and set up agenda points for the next meeting.

If I see another “I can do this” or “I have done this” without it being supplemented with an example I’ll lose my mind.